In the field of computer hardware and software technology, a virtual machine is a software implementation of a machine (computer) that executes program instructions like a real machine. Virtual machine technology allows for the sharing of, between multiple virtual machines, the physical resources underlying the virtual machines.
A technique known as copy-on-write allows multiple applications or processes to request access to the same resource. Once one of the processes attempts to modify the resource, a duplicate resource is created.
In virtual machine environments, storage volumes within the virtual machines contain data items that need to be accessed. Further complicating matters, a virtual machine environment utilizing copy-on-write may require access to the one or more duplicate storage volume.
Unfortunately, accessing the underlying contents of a storage volume and/or a duplicate storage volume can be very resource intensive, reducing the performance of a virtual machine and other operations within a virtual machine environment.